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Official Website

Nearby Subway Stops

J, M, Z at Marcy Ave.

Prices

$17-$35

Payment Methods

American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Visa

Special Features

Late-Night Dining

Notable Chef

Alcohol

Full Bar

Profile

This venue is closed.

Let’s have the pig’s head and the steamed
buns tonight, Dad,” my 10-year-old daughter said merrily as we sat down
for our second, or maybe third, meal at Zak Pelaccio’s inspired little
fusion-barbecue joint, Fatty ’Cue, in Williamsburg. Restaurant critics
don’t drag their families around on their gastronomic rounds, as a
rule. Especially over crowded bridges, through miles of rush-hour
traffic, in the dog days of July. But this wasn’t work, really. We were
back by popular demand, sitting upstairs in the quirky warren of rooms
that Pelaccio has converted into one of the great destinations of this
year’s barbecue season. Next to us, just under the ceiling, was a
gently twirling Styrofoam pig covered in sparkles. The mingled smells
of wood smoke, sizzling pork fat, and burnt sugar wafted in from the
smoker outside. My daughter put down her menu and waited, with a smile
on her face, for our pig’s head to arrive. “I wish this restaurant was
in our neighborhood,” she said.

Pig’s
head is a regular special at Fatty ’Cue, but throughout the week, all
sorts of strange, unexpected delicacies emerge from the smoker, which
is manned by famed New York pit master Robbie Richter, from Rego Park.
Richter made his reputation at Hill Country,
where he produced an uncanny facsimile of barbecued beef brisket, that
Texas specialty. But at Fatty ’Cue, he and Pelaccio (who is a
proprietor of the popular Fatty Crab
restaurants, in Manhattan) produce a different, more original kind of
alchemy. The restaurant’s stated theme is Malaysian barbecue, which
means its version of thick-cut, Peter Luger–style
bacon ($11) comes to the table sizzled not in more bacon fat, but
coriander. And if you ask about the addictive, faintly funky quality of
the delicately fatty lamb ribs ($12), your waiter will tell you that
the key is in the brine, a mix of white wine and a spicy fermented
shrimp paste called cincalok.

Other
cooks—David Chang, Anita Lo—have dabbled in traditional Asian barbecue.
But with Richter’s help, Pelaccio is the first to combine the classic
salty-sweet flavor profile of the East with the bulky, messy, down-home
goodness of authentic American barbecue. His excellent Bobo chicken
(named for the famed upstate chickens favored by Chinatown restaurants)
is half a bird, smoked by Richter and his minions, cut in quarters, and
served with a tangy Vietnamese-style dipping sauce made with chopped
cucumber, red onion, and chiles. The lamb shoulder is wood-smoked, then
pulled off the bone and served, the way they do it in Muslim
restaurants in Kuala Lumpur and Xi’an, with wedges of toasted pita and
a bowl of garlic-flavored goat yogurt garnished with sprigs of mint.

My
daughter would like you to know that the pork ribs at Fatty ’Cue are
nothing like the knobby, pre-lacquered ribs she’s used to at the
Chinese restaurants in our neighborhood. They’re meaty and smoky-sweet
(basted with smoked-fish palm syrup and Indonesian long pepper), and
even if you’re a diminutive 10-year-old, it’s pretty much impossible to
eat just one. If you don’t like pork, the duck isn’t bad either (it’s
crisp-fried and flavored with smoked red curry). And if you don’t like
duck, you can slurp bowls of the house noodles, which come in a
vegetarian variety (with mushrooms and a poached egg) or sunk in a
flavorful “meat juice” broth brimming with fresh-cut scallions and
chiles. And what about that pig’s head? It’s cut in half and served on
a platter, in the Chang style, with steamed buns. The cheeks are
probably the best part of the experience, at least according to Jane
Platt, although once you’ve had one barbecued pig’s head for dinner,
she confided on the drive home, that’s probably enough. — Adam Platt

The Legend

On Monday nights, ask for the Legend, a mouthwatering, bone-in cut of pork rib, chop, and belly.